


Stormspirit

by bladeCleaner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Promptbound, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 07:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a thunderstorm coming in over the horizon, and you bet your boonbucks that John Egbert is the kid who loves playing with lightning and watching the clouds gather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stormspirit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lantadyme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lantadyme/gifts).



“Sploosh!” the water balloon splatters across his face and he whirls around, surprised, to find Ingrid-the girl from his sixth grade class-grinning, hands on her hips, another water balloon almost pulsating in her right hand for a target.

He quickly digs in his heels, scales over a fence and sprints behind the nearest house for shelter; he’s six blocks from home and he’ll never make it that far. In his mind there’s the Jaws theme music playing-if she catches him he’ll die of-of-of _pruny fingers_ , or something. Plus, this is his favourite shirt.

He searches the nondescript backyard for something, anything-and finds a typical garden hose. He grins and waits with the rubbery material under his fingers. He wants to yell out a fiery warcry. Maybe he can scramble up the rooftop and douse her from above? Nah, there isn’t nearly enough hose for that. Maybe he can hide in a tree.

He peeks out from his hiding place. The entire sixth grade is entirely soaking wet and shrieking like banshees across the avenue, having joined in Ingrid’s war armed with water guns and balloons.

He clambers up a nearby apple tree, carefully trailing the hose so that it curls out long enough, and blasts them with the spray, nearly falling off the branch himself. There’s a collective yelling and groaning. He quickly clears the tree, drops the hose before its owners can catch him and _runs_. There’s a million water guns on his tail and at least a dozen kids armed with water balloons. When he finally opens the door to his house, he’s entirely soaked with a wide grin on his face. When he walks, his feet leave tiny puddles on the floor.

There’s the classic stern lecture from Dad when he fails to sneak past the kitchen. His magic chest gets confiscated and John tries to steal it back a la clever disguise, but his Beagle Puss is whipped off when he’s sneaking in the hallway. Foiled again.

Disapproving, his dad extends a fatherly, firm arm towards the shower, indicating that he can again bask in the glory of Colonel Sassacre when he has cleaned himself up from his youthful shenanigans.

John rolls his eyes. Well, he was feeling kind of icky anyway. Still, completely worth it.

When he comes out rubbing his head with a towel, he feels clean and new after the mushy wetness of clothes soaked with tap-water and sweat. It’s been a hot summer.

He looks out the window. The brilliant blue sky, so perfect for a refreshing water fight, has turned ominously dark around the horizon. In the distance there’s thunderclouds coalescing together and he blinks, almost missing the slight explosion of lightning within them, like a sky-contained bomb. He counts the seconds until the sound hits. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three-

_Boom._

The distant rumbling sounds like-like an underground slumbering monster’s snoring.

He slings the towel around his shoulders and runs downstairs. Usually he doesn’t pay much attention to the weather and just chats with Dave, Rose and Jade if he can’t play outside, but there’s crispness in the air, an anticipation, that draws him out like a jumping magnet. The breeze immediately picks up the second he’s out of the door. The various trees around the neighbourhood begin to rustle their leaves and there’s a coolness dripping around him, the wind breaking around him in fluid streams. His shirt flaps. His damp hair whips around his head a little and a laugh breaks out of him like the sound is a dam breaking. Underneath his skin, his nerves are singing an electric song. The air current feels so strong that he thinks he could just jump and his feet would just lift from the porch and he’d spiral away into the heavens, light as a feather.

The clouds are gaining faster now, almost directly above their neighbourhood, looking monstrous and hungry and huge. He can hear the sound of radio static next door and windows being shuttered closed. There’s a sudden flash of light, illuminating everything a shocking white, but the rain doesn’t pour down yet. Another distant rumbling, like the sleeping monster has just begun to stir.

He’s on his toes, leaning on the balustrade, his head almost peeking out from under the shelter of his house. He stretches out one hand, curls open his palm and with a mighty clap the rain starts to pour. The droplets collect in the cavity of his hand lines and he gives a chuckle. He dashes back before the rain gets too heavy, however-he doesn’t want to take a second shower!

He gets back inside when his Dad appears by the window looking puzzled.

He heads up and watches the rest of the storm hit, perched on the windowsill. The tire swing on the tree out back rocks back and forth, almost on the verge of detaching. The slime pogo springs up and down dejectedly, covered in a layer of rainwater. He watches the streets shine slickly with wetness.

There’s water endlessly dribbling down his glass window, forking into different streams, subsuming drops in their path or splitting into separate droplets like mercury. As the thunderstorm rages on, the street’s steeped with night darkness and the streetlamps pop on. Within every drop he watches the pin point dance of every light…

On his computer Pesterchum whines and he’s snapped out of his contemplative reverie. Man, he really spaced out there!

He logs into Pesterchum, sets status as PEPPY and checks in with his friends. When the rain finally lets up, he cranks open the window a little, letting in the scrubbed, refreshingly chill air. It circulates through his room and he spends the rest of the night in a good mood, smiling.

\--

_Years in the future, but not many_

He thinks back on that warm summer’s night, his eleven-year-old self enchanted by the storm. 

He read somewhere that thunderstorms are caused by moist, warm air moving rapidly upwards. He looks down at his hands and then up at the blue summer’s sky, so reminiscent of back then. It’s as warm as it was back on that afternoon.

He dons his God Tier outfit and puts on his godhood in a dramatic fashion, chuckling. Then he dissipates into a thousand faint-blue wisps in the middle of his generous balcony apartment. He’s the sudden shaft of wind floating through the air vents. He’s picking up leaves off the sidewalk outside, mussing up manes of hair on the way up, a wind spirit on the move.

He shoots skyward like a rocket, becoming the atmosphere, feeling which parts are moist and warm. He gathers it up in bundles, surrounding himself with it like a thick quilt.

When he reaches the zenith of his ascension, above the city, he finally converges again into a human form. He’s in an air bubble of hot, wet air and he moves his arms like an orchestra conductor, the air ascending.

His arms move upward as if he’s dancing. He feels like a bird flapping its wings. He waves them about, grinning, feeling the moist air-mass condense and cool in the higher altitudes, forming cumulus clouds. The ballooning, expanding sensation in his chest makes him think he’s going to collapse into a million starbursts.

The sky below him roils into a boiling pot quickly as he continues the updraft of moist air. In this moment he feels truly like a god; spinning the air underneath him into a crackling thundercloud above the city. The forces of nature are billowing under his hands.

When he sees that it’s entered its mature stage he hovers and then drops like a comet down into the city, transfiguring into wind on the way.

He weaves through apartment buildings as doors begin to slam, one after another. The surprised looks on strangers’ faces make him laugh. He even finds a child’s stray airplane and launches it out of his hands with a strong push; it flies out the window and into the sky. He giggles a little at the kid’s mouth slowly becoming a large O as he watches.

He hears the familiar clap of thunder outside as he does and he smiles, a little blue Cheshire Cat’s crescent grin hanging in mid-air. He ascends to see his handiwork from above, savouring the rush of the wind breaking around him.

Beyond the thunderstorm, the sun has almost set, colouring the clouds above golden and scarlet. He watches the first bolt of lightning emerge from his thundercloud and it’s magnificent; pure electric-zap energy in a thin streak, colouring the whole city white. The ensuing thunder is the loudest he’s ever heard it, but then again he’s so close-he draws back.

He looks at the rain falling onto the city. The localized rainfall area is something to behold; it’s as if the entire place is taking a communal shower. There are raindrops on his glasses from just watching.

He settles back on his cloud-perch above, listening to the soothing sound of the heavy downpours and the occasional thunderclap, waving a hand whenever it seems like the wind shear is dropping. Sometimes the cloud sends vibrations through his spine with the thunder’s roar and he rides out every second.

When night finally falls, he’s exposed to the largest amount of stars he’s ever seen in his entire life. There seems to be more light than sky. He’s bathed in soft starlight. It’s one of the most wonderful things he’s ever seen and he feels like he could fall asleep right there, exposed to the open air where he belongs.

But he has to get home before anybody worries too much about him. The rainfall slows to a light, gentle drizzle.

He returns home, a shifting current of air through the curtains and sits by the windowsill, feeling nostalgic. There’s water dribbling down the window and he slides it open to get blasted with the chill night air. He smiles and looks down on the city, washed clean with rainwater and so still and quiet after the lightning, feeling amazing. Breath powers really _are_ awesome.

**> Heir: Be content.**

**Author's Note:**

> Transferred over from Tumblr! A Promptbound fill for lanta that was pretty fun to write. The second part is written in that strange land of 'They won the game, everybody's living on Earth and got to keep their powers'. 
> 
> Yes, I stole the title from a Homestuck soundtrack. I was also thinking about 'Stormchaser', but this isn't John becoming one, so this seemed more appropriate.


End file.
